Discourse 10. Faith and Private Judgment

{192} WHEN we consider the beauty, the majesty, the completeness, the
resources, the consolations, of the Catholic Religion, it may strike
us with wonder, my brethren, that it does not convert the multitude of
those who come in its way. Perhaps you have felt this surprise
yourselves; especially those of you who have been recently converted,
and can compare it, from experience, with those religions which the
millions of this country choose instead of it. You know from
experience how barren, unmeaning, and baseless those religions are;
what poor attractions they have, and how little they have to say for
themselves. Multitudes, indeed, are of no religion at all; and you may
not be surprised that those who cannot even bear the thought of God,
should not feel drawn to His Church; numbers, too, hear very little
about Catholicism, or a great deal of abuse and calumny against it,
and you may not be surprised that they do not all at once become
Catholics; but what may fairly surprise those who enjoy the fulness of
Catholic blessings is, that those who see the Church ever so
distantly, who see even gleams or the faint lustre of her {193} majesty,
nevertheless should not be so far attracted by what they see as to
seek to see more,—should not at least put themselves in the way to
be led on to the Truth, which of course is not ordinarily recognised
in its Divine authority except by degrees. Moses, when he saw the
burning bush, turned aside to see "that great sight";
Nathaniel, though he thought no good could come out of Nazareth, at
least followed Philip to Christ, when Philip said to him, "Come
and see"; but the multitudes about us see and hear, in some
measure, surely,—many in ample measure,—and yet are not persuaded
thereby to see and hear more, are not moved to act upon their
knowledge. Seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not; they are
contented to remain as they are; they are not drawn to inquire, or at
least not drawn on to embrace.

Many explanations may be given of this difficulty; I will proceed
to suggest to you one, which will sound like a truism, but yet has a
meaning in it. Men do not become Catholics, because they have not
faith. Now you may ask me, how this is saying more than that men do
not believe the Catholic Church because they do not believe it;
which is saying nothing at all. Our Lord, for instance, says, "He
who cometh to Me shall not hunger, and he who believeth in Me shall
never thirst";—to believe then and to come are the same thing.
If they had faith, of course they would join the Church, for the very
meaning, the very exercise of faith, is joining the Church. But I mean
something more than this: faith is a state of mind, it is a particular
mode of thinking and acting, which is {194} exercised, always indeed towards
God, but in very various ways. Now I mean to say, that the multitude
of men in this country have not this habit or character of mind. We
could conceive, for instance, their believing in their own religions,
even if they did not believe in the Church; this would be faith,
though a faith improperly directed; but they do not believe even their
own religions; they do not believe in anything at all. It is a
definite defect in their minds: as we might say that a person had not
the virtue of meekness, or of liberality, or of prudence, quite
independently of this or that exercise of the virtue, so there is such
a religious virtue as faith, and there is such a defect as the absence
of it. Now I mean to say that the great mass of men in this country
have not this particular virtue called faith, have not this virtue at
all. As a man might be without eyes or without hands, so they are
without faith; it is a distinct want or fault in their soul; and what
I say is, that since they have not this faculty of religious belief,
no wonder they do not embrace that, which cannot really be embraced
without it. They do not believe any teaching at all in any true sense;
and therefore they do not believe the Church in particular.

Now, in the first place, what is faith? it is assenting to a
doctrine as true, which we do not see, which we cannot prove, because
God says it is true, who cannot lie. And further than this, since God
says it is true, not with His own voice, but by the voice of His
messengers, it is assenting to what man says, not simply viewed as a
man, but to what he is commissioned to {195} declare, as a messenger,
prophet, or ambassador from God. In the ordinary course of this world
we account things true either because we see them, or because we can
perceive that they follow and are deducible from what we do see; that
is, we gain truth by sight or by reason, not by faith. You will say
indeed, that we accept a number of things which we cannot prove or
see, on the word of others; certainly, but then we accept what they
say only as the word of man; and we have not commonly that absolute
and unreserved confidence in them, which nothing can shake. We know
that man is open to mistake, and we are always glad to find some
confirmation of what he says, from other quarters, in any important
matter; or we receive his information with negligence and unconcern,
as something of little consequence, as a matter of opinion; or, if we
act upon it, it is as a matter of prudence, thinking it best and
safest to do so. We take his word for what it is worth, and we use it
either according to our necessity, or its probability. We keep the
decision in our own hands, and reserve to ourselves the right of
reopening the question whenever we please. This is very different from
Divine faith; he who believes that God is true, and that this is His
word, which He has committed to man, has no doubt at all. He is as
certain that the doctrine taught is true, as that God is true; and he
is certain, because God is true, because God has spoken,
not because he sees its truth or can prove its truth. That is, faith
has two peculiarities;—it is most certain, decided, positive,
immovable {196} in its assent, and it gives this assent not because it sees
with eye, or sees with the reason, but because it receives the tidings
from one who comes from God.

This is what faith was in the time of the Apostles, as no one can
deny; and what it was then, it must be now, else it ceases to be the
same thing. I say, it certainly was this in the Apostles' time, for
you know they preached to the world that Christ was the Son of God,
that He was born of a Virgin, that He had ascended on high, that He
would come again to judge all, the living and the dead. Could the
world see all this? could it prove it? how then were men to receive
it? why did so many embrace it? on the word of the Apostles, who were,
as their powers showed, messengers from God. Men were told to submit
their reason to a living authority. Moreover, whatever an Apostle
said, his converts were bound to believe; when they entered the
Church, they entered it in order to learn. The Church was their
teacher; they did not come to argue, to examine, to pick and choose,
but to accept whatever was put before them. No one doubts, no one can
doubt this, of those primitive times. A Christian was bound to take
without doubting all that the Apostles declared to be revealed; if the
Apostles spoke, he had to yield an internal assent of his mind; it
would not be enough to keep silence, it would not be enough not to
oppose: it was not allowable to credit in a measure; it was not
allowable to doubt. No; if a convert had his own private thoughts of
what was {197} said, and only kept them to himself, if he made some secret
opposition to the teaching, if he waited for further proof before he
believed it, this would be a proof that he did not think the Apostles
were sent from God to reveal His will; it would be a proof that he did
not in any true sense believe at all. Immediate, implicit submission
of the mind was, in the lifetime of the Apostles, the only, the
necessary token of faith; then there was no room whatever for what is
now called private judgment. No one could say: "I will choose my
religion for myself, I will believe this, I will not believe that; I
will pledge myself to nothing; I will believe just as long as I
please, and no longer; what I believe today I will reject tomorrow, if
I choose. I will believe what the Apostles have as yet said, but I
will not believe what they shall say in time to come." No; either
the Apostles were from God, or they were not; if they were, everything
that they preached was to be believed by their hearers; if they were
not, there was nothing for their hearers to believe. To believe a
little, to believe more or less, was impossible; it contradicted the
very notion of believing: if one part was to be believed, every part
was to be believed; it was an absurdity to believe one thing and not
another; for the word of the Apostles, which made the one true, made
the other true too; they were nothing in themselves, they were all
things, they were an infallible authority, as coming from God. The
world had either to become Christian, or to let it alone; there was no
room for private tastes and fancies, no room for private judgment.
{198}

Now surely this is quite clear from the nature of the case; but is
also clear from the words of Scripture. "We give thanks to
God," says St. Paul, "without ceasing, because when ye had
received from us the word of hearing, which is of God, ye received it,
not as the word of men, but (as it is indeed) the Word of God."
Here you see St. Paul expresses what I have said above; that the Word
comes from God, that it is spoken by men, that it must be received,
not as man's word, but as God's word. So in another place he says:
"He who despiseth these things, despiseth not man, but God, who
hath also given in us His Holy Spirit". Our Saviour had made a
like declaration already: "He that heareth you, heareth Me; and
he that despiseth you, despiseth Me; and he that despiseth Me,
despiseth Him that sent Me". Accordingly, St. Peter on the day of
Pentecost said: "Men of Israel, hear these words, God hath
raised up this Jesus, whereof we are witnesses. Let all
the house of Israel know most certainly that God hath made this
Jesus, whom you have crucified, both Lord and Christ." At another
time he said: "We ought to obey God, rather than man; we are witnesses
of these things, and so is the Holy Ghost, whom God has given
to all who obey Him". And again: "He commanded us to preach
to the people, and to testify that it is He (Jesus) who hath been
appointed by God to be the Judge of the living and of the dead".
And you know that the persistent declaration of the first preachers
was: "Believe and thou shalt be saved": they do not say,
"prove our doctrine by your own reason," {199} nor "wait till
you see before you believe"; but, "believe without seeing
and without proving, because our word is not our own, but God's
word". Men might indeed use their reason in inquiring into the
pretensions of the Apostles; they might inquire whether or not they
did miracles; they might inquire whether they were predicted in the
Old Testament as coming from God; but when they had ascertained this
fairly in whatever way, they were to take all the Apostles said for
granted without proof; they were to exercise their faith, they were to
be saved by hearing. Hence, as you perhaps observed, St. Paul
significantly calls the revealed doctrine "the word of
hearing," in the passage I quoted; men came to hear, to accept,
to obey, not to criticise what was said; and in accordance with this
he asks elsewhere: "How shall they believe Him, whom they have
not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? Faith cometh by
hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ."

Now, my dear brethren, consider, are not these two states or acts
of mind quite distinct from each other;—to believe simply what a
living authority tells you, and to take a book, such as Scripture, and
to use it as you please, to master it, that is, to make yourself the
master of it, to interpret it for yourself, and to admit just what you
choose to see in it, and nothing more? Are not these two procedures
distinct in this, that in the former you submit, in the latter you
judge? At this moment I am not asking you which is the better, I am
not asking whether this or that is practicable now, but are they not
two ways of taking {200} up a doctrine, and not one? is not submission quite
contrary to judging? Now, is it not certain that faith in the time of
the Apostles consisted in submitting? and is it not certain that it
did not consist in judging for one's self. It is in vain to say that
the man who judges from the Apostles' writings, does submit to those
writings in the first instance, and therefore has faith in them; else
why should he refer to them at all? There is, I repeat, an essential
difference between the act of submitting to a living oracle, and to
his written words; in the former case there is no appeal from the
speaker, in the latter the final decision remains with the reader.
Consider how different is the confidence with which you report
another's words in his presence and in his absence. If he be absent,
you boldly say that he holds so and so, or said so and so; but let him
come into the room in the midst of the conversation, and your tone is
immediately changed. It is then, "I think I have heard you
say something like this, or what I took to be this"; or
you modify considerably the statement or the fact to which you
originally pledged him, dropping one-half of it for safety sake, or
retrenching the most startling portions of it; and then after all you
wait with some anxiety to see whether he will accept any portion of it
at all. The same sort of process takes place in the case of the
written document of a person now dead. I can fancy a man magisterially
expounding St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians or to the Ephesians,
who would be better content with the writer's absence than his sudden
reappearance among us; {201} lest the Apostle should take his own meaning
out of his commentator's hands and explain it for himself. In a word,
though he says he has faith in St. Paul's writings, he confessedly has
no faith in St. Paul; and though he may speak much about truth as
found in Scripture, he has no wish at all to be like one of these
Christians whose names and deeds occur in it.

I think I may assume that this virtue, which was exercised by the
first Christians, is not known at all among Protestants now; or at
least if there are instances of it, it is exercised towards those, I
mean their own teachers and divines, who expressly disclaim that they
are fit objects of it, and who exhort their people to judge for
themselves. Protestants, generally speaking, have not faith, in the
primitive meaning of that word; this is clear from what I have been
saying, and here is a confirmation of it. If men believed now as they
did in the times of the Apostles, they could not doubt nor change. No
one can doubt whether a word spoken by God is to be believed; of
course it is; whereas any one, who is modest and humble, may easily be
brought to doubt of his own inferences and deductions. Since men
now-a-days deduce from Scripture, instead of believing a teacher, you
may expect to see them waver about; they will feel the force of their
own deductions more strongly at one time than at another, they will
change their minds about them, or perhaps deny them altogether;
whereas this cannot be, while a man has faith, that is, belief that
what a preacher says to him comes from God. This is what St. Paul
especially insists on, telling us that {202} Apostles, prophets,
evangelists, pastors, and teachers, are given us that "we may all
attain to unity of faith," and, on the contrary, in order
"that we be not as children tossed to and fro, and carried
about by every gale of doctrine". Now, in matter of fact, do not
men in this day change about in their religious opinions without any
limit? Is not this, then, a proof that they have not that faith which
the Apostles demanded of their converts? If they had faith, they would
not change. Once believe that God has spoken, and you are sure He
cannot unsay what He has already said; He cannot deceive; He cannot
change; you have received it once for all; you will believe it ever.

Such is the only rational, consistent account of faith; but so far
are Protestants from professing it, that they laugh at the very notion
of it. They laugh at the notion itself of men pinning their faith (as
they express themselves) upon Pope or Council; they think it simply
superstitious and narrow-minded, to profess to believe just what the
Church believes, and to assent to whatever she will say in time to
come on matters of doctrine. That is, they laugh at the bare notion of
doing what Christians undeniably did in the time of the Apostles.
Observe, they do not merely ask whether the Catholic Church has a
claim to teach, has authority, has the gifts;—this is a reasonable
question;—no, they think that the very state of mind which such a
claim involves in those who admit it, namely, the disposition to
accept without reserve or question, that this is slavish. They
call it priestcraft to insist on this surrender of the reason, and
superstition to {203} make it. That is, they quarrel with the very state of
mind which all Christians had in the age of the Apostles; nor is there
any doubt (who will deny it?) that those who thus boast of not being
led blindfold, of judging for themselves, of believing just as much
and just as little as they please, of hating dictation, and so forth,
would have found it an extreme difficulty to hang on the lips of the
Apostles, had they lived at their date, or rather would have simply
resisted the sacrifice of their own liberty of thought, would have
thought life eternal too dearly purchased at such a price, and would
have died in their unbelief. And they would have defended themselves
on the plea that it was absurd and childish to ask them to believe
without proof, to bid them give up their education, and their
intelligence, and their science, and in spite of all those
difficulties which reason and sense find in the Christian doctrine, in
spite of its mysteriousness, its obscurity, its strangeness, its
unacceptableness, its severity, to require them to surrender
themselves to the teaching of a few unlettered GalilŠans, or a
learned indeed but fanatical Pharisee. This is what they would have
said then; and if so, is it wonderful they do not become Catholics
now? The simple account of their remaining as they are, is, that they
lack one thing,—they have not faith; it is a state of mind, it is a
virtue, which they do not recognise to be praiseworthy, which they do
not aim at possessing.

What they feel now, my brethren, is just what both Jew and Greek
felt before them in the time of the Apostles, and what the natural man
has felt ever since. {204} The great and wise men of the day looked down
upon faith, then as now, as if it were unworthy the dignity of human
nature: "See your vocation, brethren, that there are not,"
among you, "many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty,
not many noble; but the foolish things of the world hath God chosen to
confound the strong, and the mean things of the world, and the things
that are contemptible, hath God chosen, and things that are not, that
He might destroy the things that are, that no flesh might glory in His
sight". Hence the same Apostle speaks of "the foolishness of
preaching". Similar to this is what our Lord had said in His
prayer to the Father: "I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and
earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent,
and hast revealed them unto little ones". Now, is it not plain
that men of this day have just inherited the feelings and traditions
of these falsely wise and fatally prudent persons in our Lord's day?
They have the same obstruction in their hearts to entering the
Catholic Church, which Pharisees and Sophists had before them; it goes
against them to believe her doctrine, not so much for want of evidence
that she is from God, as because, if so, they shall have to submit
their minds to living men, who have not their own cultivation or depth
of intellect, and because they must receive a number of doctrines,
whether they will or no, which are strange to their imagination and
difficult to their reason. The very characteristic of the Catholic
teaching and of the Catholic teacher is to them a preliminary
objection to their becoming {205} Catholics, so great, as to throw into the
shade any argument however strong, which is producible in behalf of
the mission of those teachers and the origin of that teaching. In
short, they have not faith.

They have not in them the principle of faith; and I repeat, it is
nothing to the purpose to urge that at least they firmly believe
Scripture to be the Word of God. In truth, it is much to be feared
that their acceptance of Scripture itself is nothing better than a
prejudice or inveterate feeling impressed on them when they were
children. A proof of it is this; that, while they profess to be so
shocked at Catholic miracles, and are not slow to call them
"lying wonders," they have no difficulty at all about
Scripture narratives, which are quite as difficult to the reason as
any miracles recorded in the history of the Saints. I have heard on
the contrary of Catholics who have been startled at first reading in
Scripture the narratives of the ark in the deluge, of the tower of
Babel, of Balaam and Balac, of the Israelites' flight from Egypt and
entrance into the promised land, and of Esau's and Saul's rejection;
which the bulk of Protestants receive without any effort of mind. How,
then, do these Catholics accept them? by faith. They say, "God is
true, and every man a liar". How come Protestants so easily to
receive them? by faith? Nay, I conceive that in most cases there is no
submission of the reason at all; simply they are so familiar with the
passages in question, that the narrative presents no difficulties to
their imagination; they have nothing to overcome. If, however, they are
led to contemplate these passages {206} in themselves, and to try them in
the balance of probability, and to begin to question about them, as
will happen when their intellect is cultivated, then there is nothing
to bring them back to their former habitual or mechanical belief; they
know nothing of submitting to authority, that is, they know nothing of
faith; for they have no authority to submit to. They either remain in
a state of doubt without any great trouble of mind, or they go on to
ripen into utter disbelief on the subjects in question, though they
may say nothing about it. Neither before they doubt, nor when they
doubt, is there any token of the presence in them of a power
subjecting reason to the Word of God. No; what looks like faith, is a
mere hereditary persuasion, not a personal principle; it is a habit
which they have learned in the nursery, which has never changed into
anything higher, and which is scattered and disappears, like a mist,
before the light, such as it is, of reason. If, however, there are
Protestants, who are not in one or other of these two states, either
of credulity or of doubt, but who firmly believe in spite of all
difficulties, they certainly have some claim to be considered under
the influence of faith; but there is nothing to show that such
persons, where they are found, are not in the way to become Catholics,
and perhaps they are already called so by their friends, showing in
their own examples the logical, indisputable connexion which exists
between possessing faith and joining the Church.

If, then, faith be now the same faculty of mind, the same sort of
habit or act, which it was in the days of {207} the Apostles, I have made
good what I set about showing. But it must be the same; it cannot mean
two things; the Word cannot have changed its meaning. Either say that
faith is not necessary now at all, or take it to be what the Apostles
meant by it, but do not say that you have it, and then show me
something quite different, which you have put in the place of it. In
the Apostles' days the peculiarity of faith was submission to a living
authority; this is what made it so distinctive; this is what made it
an act of submission at all; this is what destroyed private judgment
in matters of religion. If you will not look out for a living
authority, and will bargain for private judgment, then say at once
that you have not Apostolic faith. And in fact you have it not; the
bulk of this nation has it not; confess you have it not; and then
confess that this is the reason why you are not Catholics. You are not
Catholics because you have not faith. Why do not blind men see the
sun? because they have no eyes; in like manner it is vain to discourse
upon the beauty, the sanctity, the sublimity of the Catholic doctrine
and worship, where men have no faith to accept it as Divine. They may
confess its beauty, sublimity, and sanctity, without believing it;
they may acknowledge that the Catholic religion is noble and majestic;
they may be struck with its wisdom, they may admire its adaptation to
human nature, they may be penetrated by its tender and winning
bearing, they may be awed by its consistency. But to commit themselves
to it, that is another matter; to choose it for their portion, to say
with the favoured Moabitess, {208} "Whithersoever thou shalt go, I will
go! and where thou shalt dwell, I will dwell; thy people shall be my
people, and thy God my God," this is the language of faith. A man
may revere, a man may extol, who has no tendency whatever to obey, no
notion whatever of professing. And this often happens in fact: men are
respectful to the Catholic religion; they acknowledge its services to
mankind, they encourage it and its professors; they like to know them,
they are interested in hearing of their movements, but they are not,
and never will be Catholics. They will die as they have lived, out of
the Church, because they have not possessed themselves of that faculty
by which the Church is to be approached. Catholics who have not
studied them or human nature, will wonder they remain where they are;
nay, they themselves, alas for them! will sometimes lament they cannot
become Catholics. They will feel so intimately the blessedness of
being a Catholic, that they will cry out, "Oh, what would I give
to be a Catholic! Oh, that I could believe what I admire! but I do
not, and I can no more believe merely because I wish to do so, than I
can leap over a mountain. I should be much happier were I a Catholic;
but I am not; it is no use deceiving myself; I am what I am; I revere,
I cannot accept."

Oh, deplorable state! deplorable because it is utterly and
absolutely their own fault, and because such great stress is laid in
Scripture, as they know, on the necessity of faith for salvation.
Faith is there made the foundation and commencement of all acceptable
obedience. It is described as the "argument" or "proof
{209} of things not seen"; by faith men have understood that God is,
that He made the world, that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him,
that the flood was coming, that their Saviour was to be born.
"Without faith it is impossible to please God"; "by
faith we stand"; "by faith we walk"; "by faith we
overcome the world". When our Lord gave to the Apostles their
commission to preach all over the world, He continued, "He that
believeth and is baptised, shall be saved; but he that believeth not,
shall be condemned". And He declared to Nicodemus, "He that
believeth in the Son, is not judged; but he that doth not believe is
already judged, because he believeth not in the Name of the
Only-begotten Son of God". He said to the Pharisees, "If you
believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins". To the
Jews, "Ye believe not, because ye are not of My sheep". And
you may recollect that before His miracles, He commonly demands faith
of the supplicant: "All things are possible," He says,
"to him that believeth"; and we find in one place, "He
could not do any miracle," on account of the unbelief of the
inhabitants.

Has faith changed its meaning, or is it less necessary now? Is it
not still what it was in the Apostles' day, the very characteristic of
Christianity, the special instrument of renovation, the first
disposition for justification, one out of the three theological
virtues? God might have renewed us by other means, by sight, by
reason, by love, but He has chosen to "purify our hearts by
faith"; it has been His will to select an instrument which the
world despises, but which is of {210} immense power. He preferred it, in His
infinite wisdom, to every other; and if men have it not, they have not
the very element and rudiment, out of which are formed, on which are
built, the Saints and Servants of God. And they have it not; they are
living, they are dying, without the hopes, without the aids of the
Gospel, because, in spite of so much that is good in them, in spite of
their sense of duty, their tenderness of conscience on many points,
their benevolence, their uprightness, their generosity, they are under
the dominion (I must say it) of a proud fiend; they have this stout
spirit within them, they determine to be their own masters in matters
of thought, about which they know so little; they consider their own
reason better than any one's else; they will not admit that any one
comes from God who contradicts their own view of truth. What! is none
their equal in wisdom anywhere? is there none other whose word is to
be taken on religion? is there none to wrest from them their ultimate
appeal to themselves? Have they in no possible way the occasion or
opportunity of faith? Is it a virtue, which, in consequence of their
transcendent sagacity, their prerogative of omniscience, they must
give up hope of exercising? If the pretensions of the Catholic Church
do not satisfy them, let them go somewhere else, if they can. If they
are so fastidious that they cannot trust her as the oracle of God, let
them find another more certainly from Him than the House of His own
institution, which has ever been called by His name, has ever
maintained the same claims, has ever taught one substance of doctrine,
{211} and has triumphed over those who preached any other. Since Apostolic
faith was in the beginning reliance on man's word, as being God's
word, since what faith was then such it is now, since faith is
necessary for salvation, let them attempt to exercise it towards
another, if they will not accept the Bride of the Lamb. Let them, if
they can, put faith in some of those religions which have lasted a
whole two or three centuries in a corner of the earth. Let them stake
their eternal prospects on kings and nobles and parliaments and
soldiery, let them take some mere fiction of the law, or abortion of
the schools, or idol of a populace, or upstart of a crisis, or oracle
of lecture-rooms, as the prophet of God. Alas! they are hardly bestead
if they must possess a virtue, which they have no means of exercising,—if
they must make an act of faith, they know not on whom, and know not
why!

What thanks ought we to render to Almighty God, my dear brethren,
that He has made us what we are! It is a matter of grace. There are,
to be sure, many cogent arguments to lead one to join the Catholic
Church, but they do not force the will. We may know them, and not be
moved to act upon them. We may be convinced without being persuaded.
The two things are quite distinct from each other, seeing you ought to
believe, and believing; reason, if left to itself, will bring you to
the conclusion that you have sufficient grounds for believing, but
belief is the gift of grace. You are then what you are, not from any
excellence or merit of your own, but by the grace of God who has
chosen you to believe. You might have {212} been as the barbarian of Africa,
or the freethinker of Europe, with grace sufficient to condemn you,
because it had not furthered your salvation. You might have had strong
inspirations of grace and have resisted them, and then additional
grace might not have been given to overcome your resistance. God gives
not the same measure of grace to all. Has He not visited you with
over-abundant grace? and was it not necessary for your hard hearts to
receive more than other people? Praise and bless Him continually for
the benefit; do not forget, as time goes on, that it is of grace; do
not pride yourselves upon it; pray ever not to lose it; and do your
best to make others partakers of it.

And you, my brethren, also, if such be present, who are not as yet
Catholics, but who by your coming hither seem to show your interest in
our teaching, and you wish to know more about it, you too remember,
that though you may not yet have faith in the Church, still God has
brought you into the way of obtaining it. You are under the influence
of His grace; He has brought you a step on your journey; He wishes to
bring you further, He wishes to bestow on you the fulness of His
blessings, and to make you Catholics. You are still in your sins;
probably you are laden with the guilt of many years, the accumulated
guilt of many a deep, mortal offence, which no contrition has washed
away, and to which no Sacrament has been applied. You at present are
troubled with an uneasy conscience, a dissatisfied reason, an unclean
heart, and a divided will; you need to be converted. Yet now the first
suggestions of grace are working in your souls, {213} and are to issue in
pardon for the past and sanctity for the future. God is moving you to
acts of faith, hope, love, hatred of sin, repentance; do not
disappoint Him, do not thwart Him, concur with Him, obey Him. You look
up, and you see, as it were, a great mountain to be scaled; you say,
"How can I possibly find a path over these giant obstacles, which
I find in the way of my becoming Catholic? I do not comprehend this
doctrine, and I am pained at that; a third seems impossible; I never
can be familiar with one practice, I am afraid of another; it is one
maze and discomfort to me, and I am led to sink down in despair."
Say not so, my dear brethren, look up in hope, trust in Him who calls
you forward. "Who art thou, O great mountain, before Zorobabel?
but a plain." He will lead you forward step by step, as He has
led forward many a one before you. He will make the crooked straight
and the rough plain. He will turn the streams, and dry up the rivers,
which lie in your path. "He shall strengthen your feet like
harts' feet, and set you up on high places. He shall widen your steps
under you, and your tread shall not be weakened." "There is
no God like the God of the righteous; He that mounts the heaven is thy
Helper; by His mighty working the clouds disperse. His dwelling is
above, and underneath are the everlasting arms; He shall cast out the
enemy from before thee, and shall say, Crumble away." "The
young shall faint, and youths shall fall; but they that hope in the
Lord shall be new-fledged in strength, they shall take feathers like
eagles, they shall run and not labour, they shall walk and not
faint."